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Comment by joncrane | Hacker News Reader

What I'm getting from this is a) It's mostly conjecture b) The author thinks it's likely that they will be creating something akin to "Kaiser Permanente lite"

Is there something else I'm missing?

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Yea, sounds like Warren Buffet isn't really behind this whole thing (entirely my observation). This morning on CNBC he was asked about the deal and only mentioned about how it was really Todd Combs that orchestrated this thing. Buffett doesn't even commit to forming a company for this new insurance idea (also of note, insurance businesses are one of Buffett's largest sectors of ownership, why note just instruct them to fix this issue???)

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/26/full-transcript-billionaire-... (Search for Todd Combs, it'll bring you to the first paragraph talking about the healthcare insurance venture thingy).

is Berkshire in the health insurance business at all? Property/casualty and auto is presumably pretty different.

Yes it's almost completely different. A few of the actuarial concepts are similar but almost nothing else carries over. In fact, most health "insurers" have shifted away from selling insurance policies and toward becoming third-party claims administrators for self-insured group buyers.

Nah. Buffet wants in, but he wants his niche which is reinsurance; covering pools who get hit with cancer patients and car wrecks so they can expense risk as a line item and keep much lower cash reserves.

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